Managing your Members with the Right Membership Software Solution

Membership organisations can find the management of their membership base difficult and demanding; more and more organisations are looking to simplify it by using a comprehensive membership management software solution. Implementing systems such as these can help you increase your membership base through targeted communication with your members.

It is critical that businesses invest in the right membership solution, so what should you look for when selecting a membership management solution? There are a lot of membership software solutions and some are far more refined and technically advanced than others. However, membership managers need to be sure that the investment they make is futureproof. This means the membership software you select must be able to increase and develop as your organisation grows, the members evolve and technology develops.

The key features that make a sophisticated membership management software solution are:

Integrated Communication Tool
Keeping up with the demands of a busy membership organisation and trying to connect with your membership base is difficult; this is why you need to ensure you manage your member data efficiently by ensuring all communication is highly targeted and relevant.

Membership subscriptions and renewals are the life blood for all membership organisations, therefore to acquire new members you must to understand what encouraged your existing members to initially subscribe and renew. Use this information within your member outreach communication strategy to attract and retain new members.

The ability to communicate with your members via both online and traditional marketing methods is necessary for any member organisation. You should be able to communicate with your membership base via:

• Social networking – Interaction with third party social sites
o Instant Messaging
o Blogs
o Forums
o Facebook
o Twitter
• E-Communications – Powerful, integrated and fully functional email marketing tool
• E-Surveys – Integrated and automated feedback management tool
• Mail merge (both Word and Email) – Direct mail campaigns
• SMS Support – Through an SMS gateway provider

A membership software solution will guarantee your communication and engagement strategy will be targeted and individually personalised whilst still making sure you continue to grow and manage your community relationships.

Membership Web Portal
A membership management software solution that includes an integrated and fully web based portal will allow your members access to their personal data at any time and from any location. Members can simply log-in using their own unique username and password and then update/amend/edit their personal data as required.

Any amendments done by the member should automatically update the membership software, ensuring your member details are always accurate. A membership portal offered by a membership software solution provider should allow all your members to access relevant tools and content such as forums, blogs and wikis, which will also encourage and support member-to-member interaction.

A comprehensive membership software solution will capture relevant information on each individual member. The member web portal should offer a number of modules to enable this information to be captured:

• Registration
• Account management
• News and content aggregation
• Blogs, wikis, etc
• Member to member communication
• Event management
• Surveys
• Forum interaction
• Invoice payment

Reporting and Analysis
Increasing the efficiency in the level and type of service you offer to your members can really only be accomplished by measuring and analysing the feedback you get from your members. This can be a very complex and time intensive activity which is often pushed aside as there always seems to be more urgent matters to take care of!

Being able to identify your membership clusters, such as geographic breakdown, job titles, profiles, dashboards and KPIs is fundamental. The segmentation of your membership base and the ability to analyse detailed reports will make sure membership managers are able to analyse their members such as the who, what, where and why, whilst still ensuring each membership group receives relevant and targeted communication.

As membership organisations expand and change, it is important that the membership software is able to grow and adapt with them. By investing in the best membership software solution, the reporting module within the membership software will make it simple for membership managers to produce regular reports and create new reports on demand.

Integration
Selecting and then investing in a membership software solution that integrates into your other business systems will ensure your internal processes are more efficient and effective. Other business systems such as your finance and CRM solution will contain membership data that will need to be updated on a permanent basis. The finance system will be processing invoices for subscription and renewals, whilst your CRM system will be continuously updated with the member’s most recent activity. By automating the process your internal business applications will make your membership management that much more efficient and successful.

Technically advanced membership software solutions will have the flexible architecture which will allow seamless integration with all your current and future business.

About the Author:
Resource Box For more information on how professional accreditation software can help your professional body or association, please contact evocos on 0800 369 8677 or email events@evocos.com. Incorporating integrated reporting and analysis tools as well as social media, email marketing, website integration, registration, online payment, badge production, resource management and event surveys, evocos is one of the most comprehensive event management software solutions on the market today. The evocos event software team ensures you are able to seamlessly manage your events; gaining huge cost and efficiency benefits.